Why Larger Formats?

In a day and age of fully automated digital cameras, one wonders why one ever used the more cumbersome box/bellows style of a large format camera. Without question, the ultra-fast cameras of today are approaching the quality of prints made from these older view cameras. Large format is normally defined as a camera which uses film in sizes 4”x 5” and larger.  By today’s standard their quality would be that of 50-60 megapixel digital camera.

In the early evolution of digital cameras, professional photographers expected only “digital camera backs” on these larger cameras could produce the same quality.  They needed to attach to a computer with lots of memory and a dependable battery pack. These were fine for studio photography but were awkward to use out in the field.  The recent rapid advancement by major camera manufacturers show that considerably smaller cameras …the size of 35mm pro-cameras will soon equal the quality of those much larger cameras.

For those who have a portfolio of film images, digital printing from scanned originals is emerging as a replacement for older darkroom techniques. Quality scans are made on high-density drum and drum-like scanners to make digital files of 150-300 megabytes. We are in a transition as digital methods of printing provide greater sharpness, more accurate color, and increase the archival display life of the photograph.  Erskine has converted and archived his film collection to digital files using an Imacon Flextight Precicion III scanner. Each image requires several hours of inspection and retouching after scanning.  The result is prints of superior quality in sharpness and lightfastness.